The Real Reason Pants Were Objectionable In The
Roman Empire
By WILLIAM KENNEDY
History - Science
In general, the ancient Romans wore tunics and togas instead of pants. However, their empire — which spanned 2 million square miles at its peak — contained many distinct peoples and fashions, and it was the Roman point of view on certain colonized people that led some Roman men to consider breeches to be distasteful.
The expansion of the Roman Empire brought the Romans into frequent conflict with Gaulish and Germanic peoples, who were known to wear pants made from animal skins. As such, trousers or pants came to represent the foreign element opposed to Roman civilization, and Roman intellectuals like Cicero and Tacitus used pants to indicate barbarism and backwardness.
Over time, however, Roman soldiers in the empire’s northern regions began to wear a type of trouser called braccae to keep warm, and the fashion soon spread to the rest of the population. Despite the attempts of Roman emperors to ban the wearing of braccae, it eventually became the norm after pants-wearing Germanic tribes like the Visigoths conquered Rome around A.D. 500.